Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Missing EVE World War 3

The third big war is upon EVE. In Delve CFC+Honeybadger will fight Southern Coalition. Considering that they are the only powerblocks in EVE, the war has the chance to be the final. The winner may won EVE, game over.

I will miss it. I don't have a pilot who can contribute and I don't belong to either of the blocks. Of course it shouldn't stop me from contributing. I could send like 50B to one of the armies. Sure, it wouldn't be a game-breaking advantage where 100B titans fly in dozens, but it would be more contribution than provided by F1-spammer-in-BC#5487. My problem emerged when I wanted to pick a recipient for my donation. I know nothing about the two fighting forces. Actually if they would both give me an invitation to join them, I couldn't choose.

There are three kinds of wars in real world. One is ideological: the sides want to enforce their way of living on the other or protect their own from it. For example in the Vietnam war the question was if Vietnam will be communist or capitalist. Everyone has a clear preference which system they want to live in. He is fighting for his choice. The war matters to the individual guy. If the enemy wins, his personal life will be strongly affected.

Obviously EVE is not real life and no one expects sides to form based on the big questions of life. However there are different ways of life in EVE and people do fight for it. One was very well described by Jester: Syndicate is populated by small, independent groups that fight each other, while the invading FA came with the idea of changing the zone their way: held by them and allies. Should they win, the Syndicate dwellers were forced into blue status or out, giving up their ability to find PvP nearby. They fought for their way of life, thats why they dared to engage a supercapital with 100 friendlies in the system. Such attack could very easily end in fleet annihilation, yet they pressed on as living in a "boring blue" region was unacceptable for them. Other possible "philosophical" wars that could shape the way of living in a region:

"Kill them all" group vs "Not red do not shoot" group

"Roaming PvP-ers" vs "alliance that want the zone for safe PvE"

"Elite PvP" vs "F1-blop" groups

"Must have 30M SP before leaving highsec" vs "fly a tackling rifter on day 1"

The second kind of war is the racist/nationalist: the war is over characteristics that cannot be changed by an individual. The attackers want to annihilate or enslave the targets who are considered inferior just because. The life of the little guy is strongly affected by the outcome. The winner will get more living space, resources, slaves, while the loser turns into second class citizen, slave or even killed with his whole family. Typical examples are the Roman Empire, colonizations, the fate of the American natives, the Mongol horde and someone who should be cited due to the Godwin law.

Again, EVE is not real life, but many "decided before birth" characteristics exist. I mean you are speaking Russian or you are not. You are member of Something Awful or Reddit or you are not. While some of these characteristics can be changed, it's irrational to think that someone will learn Russian just to play a video game. Such wars aren't that rare: the recent Burn Jita was a typical "only the dead Indian is a good Indian" campaign by the Goons against the highsec native "pubbies".

Now the question is "Does the war in Delve fit into these categories?". Are the warring parties different in way of life? If so, they are hiding it very well. From the countless news it seems that both are very diverse and accept very different people. Just think that TEST that field Retreivers for lols is together with the most hardcore pure-PvP PL.

The sides are also diverse in every possible RL way. Sure, some corps and alliances have strict out-of-game selection, you can hardly be Goon without being an SA poster, and you can hardly be in Hun Reloaded without speaking Hungarian. However the both sides include hundreds of different corporations, and I find it totally impossible for anyone to be unable to join either side because of out-of-game reasons. You can be rejected by this or that corp, but you surely find a corp both in SoCo and Honey-CFC that takes you.

These mean that the life of an individual pilot isn't really affected by the outcome of the war, even if the war ends with total victory for one side. He can keep on living in null, do the same things that he used to do, simply in a different corp. Let's imagine SoCo ends up a highsec miner alliance, just as Evemonkey predicted. What will happen to the inhabitants? His own history is the answer: he used to be in -A- and now in the CFC-Honeybadger block. The "just have fun" pilots of -A- will find a place in TEST for example, while those with great killboards will get in PL. The renters will pay their money to CFC-Honey, everyone will find a new place. Some will have to move a few systems away and change corps but the end of the day he'll be living the same life.

The third kind of real world wars are exactly this: the warring sides differ only in their leaders. The aim of the war is to make leaders more powerful. The little guys are not affected besides having to replace flags and send their tax to the new overlord. Typical examples are warlord battles of Africa, the warring kingdoms of Germany before Bismark, the shogunate wars in Japan.

I believe this war in Delve will shape nothing therefore will decide nothing besides the glory or fall of The Mittani and other prominent figures. I miss on nothing but PvP experience, repair bill and awesome screenshots. EVE won't be won in Delve. The differences that exist will exist. No questions will be answered. Only some alliance and corp leaders lose their status and some get even more. That's the best case scenario. There is chance that after some brawls everyone go home.

Of course I can be wrong. Maybe there is huge cultural or out-of-game differences between the powerblocks. If you can point to a personality/background that makes one say "if our side loses I must leave null as the other side would not take me", please comment.

PS: have you ever wondered if the Jita scammers have any victims? I mean they are spamming really lame scams. Right click their name, show info, check the list of their public contracts:

So yes. There are lot of fools who fall for a lame scam-spambot.

Tuesday morning report: 80.7B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on logi, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 0.5 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 0.8 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

19 comments:

The only thing special about this war so far is that more players are involved than normal. Even in that aspect, a few historical wars have come pretty close.

That's beside the point, though. 0.0 will never be owned by a single group because the type of people who live in 0.0 want to have wars. If one group eventually owns most of the map, it will turn on itself -- just like the DRF did less than a year ago.

Also, some groups need wars. Most notably goons -- their culture dictates the need for an enemy on whom to loose the dogs of war, and they are too big and unified to be kicked out of null or to be made to collapse from outside pressure.

Because they cannot be killed, 0.0 cannot be unified by anyone else; and because they need enemies, they will never try to unify it themselves.

What the Delve conflict reminds me of is WW1. Namely that it started out as a minor affair between two powers who then chose to draw in allies in order to try to tip the scales in their favor. When one side got too powerful, the other brought in another powerful ally to meet it. And before you know it... everyone's jumped in and you have a far bigger fight than anyone expected.

And honestly... I hope the parallels don't end there. I look forward to a galactic-wide catastrophe that will batter and weaken all the powers involved. I want to see these guys slug it out for the months, if not years, to come.

Probably. I noticed that every triage module II disappeared from the forge market at the same time as things kicked off, and older wars with fewer people involved have bought out resources before (e.g. strontium during the delve 2 burn).

Aid the war effort. Wars burn through ammo, ships, minerals and efficient trade brings an advantage to all involved. Help miners get the optimal price. Aid production by making those resources available to the market that needs it. Help to get war-junk recycled into something productive. Be the ultimate carebear and free-trade to victory! That will benefit each side (and yourself) far more than 50B ISK

@first anonymous - sorry, my fault I think - had "third great war" on my blog post that gevlon linked - think it just depends how you count them. my corp used to be part of IT/BoB so maybe it's come from that perspective.

Just a point to consider: I write my blog for a target audience of High sec players who like living vicariously in nullsec via pretty screenshots of large ships or fleets that they wouldn't get to see otherwise. My style is to present impressive screenshots and provide inspiration and motivation in my readers (I think this worked on you maybe?). Just as you wish to inspire people to trade, I want to inspire people to join nullsec.

I don't post about everything I do in eve, people don't want to read that I just spent an hour or so sitting on top of a gate scouting, or that despite being in a large fleet we were all stuck in a pos for hours due to being overwhelmed by superior numbers. As a result I don't tend to post losses or straightforward fights. A minor side effect of this is that I operate as a mild propoganda outlet.

The current delve war is no different. consider if I wrote the following:

"The current delve war won't be the final war in eve. The win criteria is the capture of Delve Querious and Period Basis. that's likely where it will end. if we go further, -A- will likely hole up in NPC Stain where they have gone in the past when overwhelmed. since Stain is an NPC region it will be impossible to kick them out and it will devolve into a war of attrition and when the CFC runs out of motivation, they'll return to the north and continuing swimming in their mountains of ISK, leaving -A- and co to return to their traditional space. In maybe a year or two Delve will change hands again and the cycle will repeat"

No one wants to read that. people want to see epic screenshots of what is happening and read motivational anticipation-laden descriptions of what is to come. They want to hear "we will fight -A- until they're a highsec mining alliance" (cue much testosterone-filled fist pumping and cheering)

As you have noted - different wars are different. This is more like wars between two large real life corporations - maybe one will destroy the other, the employees will remain alive and may join the opposing corporation. Business continues.

but this sort of nihilism is not what my blog is for :-)

on a more practical note: don't waste your 50billion. 50 bil is peanuts for the alliances involved - I heard on TS that we're quite capable of replacing 3-4 tengu fleets per week - that's 400 billion income per week. your isk won't make a difference to any alliance and wouldn't therefore be appreciated, and you won't see its benefits. the best you could hope for is "we just lost our tengu fleet, your isk payed for replacing half of it, thanks"

you will not miss out - perhaps the war is going to be still raging in a month's time. When I was in Mostly Harmless we were constantly under attack and were constantly fighting mini-wars against Evoke, PL, triumverate, this went on for many months. but as for Delve2012, I don't know - this is my first major war.

and finally a point of clarification: I'm in Executive Outcomes (named after the RL mercenary group), not TEST.

@Evemonkey: beware that your target audience has little knowledge of null, so they (we) can take even a phrase or battle cry literally. If you talk to inexperienced crowd, you must be boringly prudent, or it comes out as incorrect (you told they will be a mining alliance and they are not).

reread your blog post and noticed that this hasn't been pointed out in teh comments yet:

"The renters will pay their money to CFC-Honey"

that statement is wrong: the CFC doesn't rent out space (which is probably the biggest cultural difference between the CFC and the South/East; -A- and the drone Russians love renters).

That doesn't mean that all alliances in the CFC are equal - there is a pecking order and in my opinion "pets" is still the adequate word to describe the status of most of the smaller alliances (a pet is not able to thrive without its master, it is trained to takes its master's orders and in turn its well-being is taken care of entirely by the master - I think that's a quite apt characterization of many CFC alliances and while "we have no pets" is a staple of CFC propaganda it's just not true in my experience).

The issue with renters is that they don't really bring in that much money (for good systems you might get 5b/month but only a small part of each region is that attractive), that they are an obvious soft spot in your alliance/coalition (and prone to getting farmed by enemies in the first stages of a war) and that you can't rely on them to do anything in addition to sending you their rent.First sign of trouble and they will either cause huge drama because they feel you aren't defending them well enough or just evacuate to empire.

Installing a small alliance that only lives at your mercy and subsidizing its continued existence with a few moons has turned out be the superior model as such a pet will send people into your coalition fleets, will go with you on deployments and hopefully won't just roll over when poked by an enemy (as they have a vested interest in defending "their" space).

are you talking about corporations inside GSF or small CFC alliances (such as SMA, FCON, A.I.F, ...)?

alliance members helping with sov upkeep/reimbursements or PACs paying fees is not something I would consider "renting" - these people are part of the alliance proper and have all responsibilities & rights that entails (and when I was in TEST the fact that dreddit paid (at that time) basically all alliance expenses out of their own corp taxes only lead to perpetual conflicts - I think making everyone pay equally is preferable).

if the smaller CFC alliances have to pay for the privilege of holding space I stand corrected.

I doubt that any entities temp-blued in order to kill FA. I know that Rote did not, and the other coalitions didn't seem to either. What we did do, was to go out of our way to engage in fights with FA since it was the encroacher.

In addition, Syndicate is NPC 0.0 space, so none of the Alliances there are ever under threat of being forcibly removed in any real way, other than having their static, POS/POCO, structures attacked.

Eve may very well be won and lost in delve. Its more of a goonswarm issue. if goons are able to take all of eve, there wont be anything left, for them or for us, and i believe that eve will begin to lose some of its luster. like the end of a good series on tv, eve may be coming upon the culmination of a decades worth of suspense and the game will go into decline.

What are the profit opportunities in a war like this? I assume the big corps are pretty well vertically integrated, with their own miners and comprehensive industry, but maybe there would be openings for a goblin. The basis of goblin neutrality in WoW was always to profit from Horde-Alliance conflict.

Will there be a market for blockade runners and other specialized logistics? Rare mats that one alliance or the other might end up short on?

From my perspective (nulli) I certainly don't want anything to do with our opposing force.

I can respect some parts of the force (i.e. test actively looking for fun fights), but I by no means wish to be part of them. Lack of honour is for the most part what I hate the most, that and the incessant crap we have to deal with in local. You'd think the game was overrun by a group of retarded monkeys.

As you point out though, PL's presence really goes against and ideology, but you have to remind yourself that PL is only in it 'because they have to', i.e. their interests lie in the Tech conglomerate. I would imagine that their stance would be very different if tech was suddenly to dissappear... (and I've talked to a few PL guys who really aren't happy to be siding with the goons).

I just think it's a shame the pvp-centric alliances that haven't joined the fight haven't yet just because they're too pig-headed to want to help some other alliance that might have hurt their feelings in the past, but it's early days in the war and lots of things can still happen.

(avoid things that are only/mostly used for doctrine ships as these will be sold fitted on contracts but consumables like drones, nanite paste, ammo and roaming ships like assault frigates are pretty safe bets)